Not according to Fud, I also think his sources are useually spot on. Southern Islands part Evergreen and part Northern Islands with the main feature being MIMD shaders in my opinion. I believe AMD want's to test them out before they eventually release there new Northern Islands Design.

Not according to Fud, I also think his sources are useually spot on. Southern Islands part Evergreen and part Northern Islands with the main feature being MIMD shaders in my opinion. I believe AMD want's to test them out before they eventually release there new Northern Islands Design.

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More realistically it will be just the opposite with Evergreen type shaders and archetectural changes from N.Islands for other parts of the GPU.

IT LOOKS LIKE the GPU roadmaps are being torn up and plan B's are coming out of the woodwork left and right. The current problem? TSMC's 28nm process, or lack thereof.

When we first told you about ATI's Northern Islands, (here, way at the bottom) the plan was simple - a new architecture on next generation 28nm HKMG processes, coming out in the next new year, 2011. The lead off parts were due to come on TSMC's 28nm process, which is set for Q1/2011, followed by derivatives on GlobalFoundries' 28nm process. Since that was due about a quarter after TSMC, the first out of the gate was going to be TSMC.

The problem is that from SemiAccurate's unscientific poll of asking several involved companies, no one seems to have any confidence that TSMC will deliver 28nm HKMG on time. Many expressed skepticism that it will deliver at all, but let's give it the benefit of the doubt here.

If you recall, TSMC 40nm was set to come out in Q4 of 2008, and it wasn't working until Q4 of 2009, more or less. Problems still plague some users though. We broke the news that TSMC canceled it's 32nm node completely, something the company has never done before.

Northern Islands(NI) from ATI and the next generation of Nvidia parts were slated to use the 32nm process, and several ATI slides have leaked showing that explicitly. When 32nm was pulled, the decision initially was made to move NI to 28nm, delaying it by a quarter or two. Fair enough.

Meanwhile, TSMC threw out its 28nm process and replaced it with a completely different one. TSMC initially claimed to use a technique called 'gate first', and that was slipping by quarters at a time. One day, it announced that it threw 'gate first' out the window and replaced it with 'gate last', a completely different process. On top of this, it pulled the roadmap in a quarter.

To call companies skeptical of the new roadmap is being overly kind. No one believed it, but what can they do? Easy, put plan C into place, and for ATI, that is called Southern Islands.

Southern Islands (SI) is a 40nm family, and from early information, it looks to be a hybrid between Evergreen and Northern Islands. The architectural details are quite slim now, but it looks like ATI took the uncore from NI and put the shaders from Evergreen on it. Think of it as taking the parts that were done and available, and putting them together.

Because it is the only option at this point, SI will be built on TSMC's 40nm process. This is good because it is known, and ready, pulling in the timetables. Low risk means low chance of problems and quick time to market. Expect SI sometime this fall. Rumors abound that some family members have already taped out, but that is far from confirmed.

In any case, ATI will likely have a fully refreshed lineup before Nvidia has its Fermi GF100 GTX4xx line fully out the door. It looks like this fall's GPU battle will be more of a howitzer versus pen knife match rather than a duel.

IMO, even if it were possible at this point to continue on with completely new architecture, I'd wonder if ATI would hold off until it's definitely ready - otherwise, they might end up in the Fermi boat as well. It would be a better marketing strategy on their part to attempt another "evolution" of the R700, while continuing new work in the background.

New architecture tends to turn into a major hurdle, speedbump, sobriety check-point, filabuster or what-have-you . . . nVidia is being reminded of that right now, and ATI were last reminded of this with the HD2000 series. If you're considered to be in the lead, sandbag and continue with R&D.

Regarding the dual-core rumour - that's been circulating around ATI cards since the 3870x2 was first hitting the rumor mill.

Although, I do believe a multi-core GPU would really be the next logical evolution of the hardware.

Well HD 5800's came from HD 4800's, and that came from HD 3800's and that came from HD 2900. I believe back them in the 2900's time frame, many though ATI would release a completely new GPU design in around the HD 5800's time frame, but they didn't, they took the best from HD 4800 and made it much better.

Now I am thinking about this rumoured ATI Code Name Southern Islands (40nm) this may very well be categorized as the HD 6800 series believe it or not. It’s already rumoured to be part CN Evergreen and part CN Northern Island. If this combination proves to be very fast, much faster than HD 5800 series, AMD may go this route and keep its pure Northern Island new design for HD 7800 series.

Perhaps no re-fresh but instead release code name Southern Islands instead. They talk of a possible Q2 2010 release, that goes with ATI's GPU release trends of the past.

But knowing how these big corporations work, they will try and milk a product for as long as possible while still staying extremely competitive.

1.1ghz GPU with stock cooling, no way! This must be another april fools

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With a 5850 sized cooler I can do 1060mhz just fine with good temps and a not too aggressive fan profile. With a 5970 sized cooler on a single GPU I think it could easily be done. I digress, the Asus 5870 Matrix will be out any day, and I'm quite certain that will do 1100mhz using its cooler and Asus voltage control.

It's not a cancellation in the sense that Intel is throwing in the towel on discrete graphics, because that's definitely not the case. The company reiterated that it still plans to launch a many-core discrete graphics product, but won't be saying anything about that future product until sometime [in 2010]. Whatever it is, it won't be the hardware/software combination that it previously announced, and that we described in our coverage of Intel's big August 2008 Larrabee reveal. It will be something else, and Intel wouldn't even characterize the relationship of that future something to the current Larrabee product.